Remembering The Chills’ Martin Phillipps, 1963–2024
New Zealand pop’s finest songwriter had a rocky life
We lost one of the greats on July 28, 2024. Martin Phillipps, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and sole constant member of The Chills, died far too soon at the age of 61 at his home in a suburb of Dunedin, New Zealand, following a decades-long battle with hepatitis C. A cult hero to the worldwide indie pop community, Phillipps was a genuine star in his native land, where The Chills — alongside The Clean, The Bats, and seemingly dozens of other bands — popularized the Dunedin Sound that made Flying Nun Records one of the most iconic indie labels of the 1980s and early ’90s. His memorial service on August 9 had to be relocated twice, finally moving to a local auditorium to accommodate the number of relatives, friends, and well-wishers who attended.
The son of a reverend and a housewife, Phillipps was born in in the NZ capital of Wellington in 1963 before his family moved to Dunedin so his father could take a prestigious post as the chaplain of the University of Otago. In his teens, Phillips became a scenester on Dunedin’s emerging punk underground, hanging around Chris Knox’s pioneering late ’70s band Toy Love and then becoming a roadie for The Clean, the first band on a scrappy indie called Flying Nun Records. Having first picked up the guitar in…
